


Humanity's Knowledge

by Spidermunkee



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Armin, BAMF Eren, BAMF Levi Ackerman, BAMF Mikasa, Canon Related, Canon Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, F/M, Hange Zoë & Levi Are Best Friends, Hange Zoë's Experiments, Heavy Angst, Horticulture, M/M, Major Character Injury, Major Illness, Medical Conditions, Medicine, Mikasa Ackerman & Levi Are Related, Morally Ambiguous Character, Plotting Erwin Smith, Plotting Pixis, Psychology, Science, Short Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), Smart Eren Yeager, Some Humor, Worldbuilding, Zoology, oc is not a mary sue
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 19:21:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17904038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spidermunkee/pseuds/Spidermunkee
Summary: Pixis had just happened to look down as something exited the tree-line and into their line of fire. However instead of a titan, it was a human running full speed toward their gate like a bullet. It was obviously dirty, covered in what appeared to be mud, but it held a bright orange bag (an unusual color that he had never seen outside of paint) and was screaming words they couldn't hear from this high up.A human, outside the walls, alone, and alive enough to run to the nearest man built settlement and beg for entry?"Help them in and get me Commander Erwin Smith," he said smoothly to a cadet standing nearby and at attention. "And give them a bath after you've acquired their things, then bring them to my office.""Sir!"Pixis never lost his genial smile.Or, the answers to the outside world were finally in his grasp, and may the Goddesses help anyone that stood in his way.





	Humanity's Knowledge

Travelling with boys was a little fun. Ish. It was fun for the sole purpose of their gathering: adventure. But travelling with boys as the only girl kind of put a damper on things. Sam wasn’t the most physically fit individual. As a botanist and a zoologist, her strengths mostly lied in her brain. The only reason she was there was because she was the only recognized botanist that volunteered to go with them. She was sure if the group had a choice, they would pick another man, one that could hike for long miles before needing a break. 

But they were stuck with her and they knew they couldn’t afford to leave her behind (her work spoke for her). She dealt with the teasing, and in turn they dealt with her needing longer and more frequent breaks. They didn’t complain when they saw her taking notes, at least. And the notes she took were some of her best; she knew that screwing this up would block her from going on other risky undertakings. Her notes were long and extensive, with diagrams and badly taken polaroid pictures.

_We stumbled upon a lakeside daisy a couple hours ago. Its scientific name is_ _tetraneuris_ _herbacea_ _..._

_The Quercus_ _palustris_ _had more vines than average with the longest measuring..._

_Forty-five centimeters above the dirt and the roots are approximately thirteen centimeters long, unusually..._

_It’s quite humid for these parts of the states. According to the weather app, only eighteen percent is needed for..._

On and on her notes went, hopefully to become a well written field journal. She couldn’t wait to get it organized and have better pictures for her findings. This was going to help her career tremendously. 

“Sam!”

Sam’s head twitched at her name being called, but she steadily continued to write, her surroundings blurring away - 

“Yo, Sam! Grub!”

\- or they would be if it wasn’t meal time.

She sighed and gently folded her pen into her notebook, stowing her compass away into her bag. Forlornly she looked over to the flower she had been studying, astagalus ackermanii. After another – admittedly annoyed – call of her name, she snapped one last picture and trudged her way across the forest ground to meet her group mates. 

“Eat up, Sass.” A bowl was pressed into her hands, bag cooked rice and veggies staring up at her.

“Thank, Mel,” she greeted, plopping down on the only open spot besides the fire. For a warm time of the year in these regions, it was an awfully chilly night. 

“I made that specially for you, Sass,” the youngest male spoke up, only a whopping nineteen years of age. 

“Thank you, Johnny, you’re kind.”

“Yo, Johnny,” Zack laughed, “I think you’ve got a little drool -”

“Shut it, Zack!” Johnny snapped, blushing a furious fire engine red.

Sam hid a smile behind her spoon of rice. Travelling with boys really wasn’t that bad.

…

Sam lingered in the back of the group, smiling as she listened to the boys argue about the importance of bookkeeping to plant biodiversity. It was an interesting debate, however that was like comparing apples to oranges. They were both equally important to each other as they directly correlate to one another. There couldn’t be organization or any major data gathering on plant biodiversity without bookkeeping, and vice versa (at least when it comes to the field of horticulture). 

Mel was a nursery manager, and he volunteered to go on this trip with them for new ideas and new plants to introduce to his nursery. It was a large one, outside and inside a greenhouse. He had twelve people that worked for him around the clock, but he paid them well and they got ample time to themselves. 

Zack was a landscaper, contracted by Mel, and he was here for a more natural design. Studying the forest and the way the plants seemed to come together in harmony was the best way to get that design. Sam found him sketching plans around the campfire or whenever they stopped for a break. 

And then there was Johnny. Sam knew Johnny well by then. Sam was one of the most successful published botanists, and Johnny was her apprentice. He followed wherever she went, and he was often looking over her shoulder as she took notes and drew diagrams. He was a bit like a little duckling and she the mama, just waddling along and hoping that her little duckling kept up. 

He also had a bit of a crush on her, which the other boys couldn’t let go. Poor kid couldn’t catch a break. She might have even gone for him if she was a decade younger and he wasn’t her apprentice. And if he wasn’t so damn tall. The boy had shot up like a spring beansprout in the last year she had known him, going from five-foot five-inches to six-foot three-inches. Sam was only five-foot one-inch. In other words, never would she go after the boy. 

“What do you think, Sass?” Mel chuckled, glancing back at the woman. She blinked up at him behind large circular glasses, freckles underlining bright hazel. 

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.” She gave him her most charming smile, the one that hid her crooked bottom teeth and emphasized her dimples. He just rolled his eyes and laughed.

“We were thinking of stopping for the night,” Johnny piped up from just ahead of her, slowing and walking beside her. 

“Oh!” Sam laughed and ran a hand through her hair, grimacing at the tug on her tangles. “Yeah, I’m definitely ready to get some sleep.”

“Well according to the map there should be a creek coming up in about a mile. Can you hold out until then?” Zack asked, folding the map and sticking it in his shorts pocket. He didn’t believe that technology held all the answers and preferred to avoid technology as much as he could. Sam just thought he was incapable of working the computer and just expressed a dislike of it so others wouldn’t look down on him for being an old man. 

“Of course,” she answered back, and quickened her pace to walk beside them all. “I’m fully capable.”

Mel chuckled at her. “We know, we’re just taking care of our little girl.”

Sam scowled up at him. “It’s not my fault you’re all giants!”

The group laughed.

…

Sam’s eyes shot open despite the fatigue dragging them down. Her breath was strangely hitched in her chest and a feeling a pure _wrongness_ lit her blood on fire. She glanced about in the dark, eyes shifting onto every shadow and every movement. Dread curled gnarly fingers around her throat and sunk her heart into her stomach. The silence was overwhelming.

Where there should have been the sound of twigs falling and a breeze in the trees, was silence. There should be soft echoes of bugs and night critters far and close, gentle rustling of her camp mates in their sleeping bags, soft crackles of a dying fire. 

But there was absolutely no sound except for her startled small gasps for air and her blood rushing through her ears like ocean waves through a phone speaker. 

“Johnny? Mel? Zack?”

Her whisper was barely more than her breath. She sat up and grabbed her flashlight, wielding it like a baton when her tent zipper achingly slowly started dragging down . . .

“Sass?”

Her breath left her in a great relieved gush. “Johnny!”

“Shhhh!”

The space was finally big enough for Johnny to pop his head in, face pinched and eyes panicked.

“What’s happening?” she whispered desperately, crawling towards him on rustling bedding.

“We need to get out of here, quietly and quickly.” Johnny’s voice was barely loud enough for her to distinguish. He held out a shaking hand and helped her exit her tent. She grabbed her already packed backpack that was ready for the next day’s hike. “We’re not in the same woods,” he breathed in her ear, eyes locked into the distance – no, eyes looking at the spot their marked tree was supposed to be. Now the space was barren, small dandelions and finger-grass patches littering the ground. She thought she saw a bit of white clove in there, too, but it was too dark to tell.

“What in the world...?”

“I couldn’t find Zack or Mel, they’re missing.” He grimaced. “I hope they’re okay.”

“Why do we have to be quiet? What’s -” Sam gripped her backpack tightly, white knuckled despite her straight face.

“I saw something – a monster. It looked human and I almost called out to it, y’know, to see if it needed help – it looked naked and it was cold – but -” Johnny shuddered. “ _It looked at me_. It had a smile on its face, but the smile was – it was so empty. And then I realized the only reason I thought it was a person was because it was so far away and it looked so small, our size.” Johnny’s hand gripped her shoulder, leaving small finger sized bruises. His eyes were so wide and panicked that they started rolling, and the whites stood out sharply. “But it’s _huge_.”

“How big?” Sam breathed, riveted. 

“I don’t know, seven meters? Ten? I couldn’t be sure because the moon is blocked by the clouds. I don’t care how big it is, though, Sass – we have to leave.”

“But maybe –”

“No.” Johnny’s eyes stopped rolling to lock gazes, intense and desperate. “You don’t understand, Sass, this thing isn’t friendly – you didn’t see -” He sucked a large breath through his nose. “Just trust me. Please.”

Sam once saw Johnny accept a dare to stick his hand into a wild tarantula’s nest and not even flinch when the barbs struck him. If Johnny was terrified, Sam was _terrified._ “Where are we going to go?”

Johnny’s lips tightened. “I don’t know.”

…

After half a day of travelling on foot in a random direction (Both of their compasses weren’t working, strangely, and did that mean that there were no magnetic poles? How was life stable here?) she finally saw it. The monster Johnny was talking about. It was so humanoid that she had to take her glasses off and hastily wipe them on the inside of her shirt.

“We need to hide,” Johnny whispered, but as soon as Sam started nodding, it turned. 

Time froze. Her surroundings dimmed from her sight. Distantly she felt Johnny’s hand on her shoulder again, shaking her. White noise attacked her ears, ringing and ringing. 

That face.

That _smile._

So many teeth. More teeth than a human, she was sure, even from so far away. Its eyes were shadowed by shaggy, tangled hair, but she was sure that they would be just as vacant. She didn’t notice it before, but its body was disproportionate. Long, skinny limbs and an engorged, distended belly with a rather large head (to store more of its teeth, she was sure). It was rather comical looking, in all honesty.

But that smile. Almost vacant but echoing a hunger so deep and terrible she could _feel_ it. It was so similar to a human, but that sense of wrongness Sam had been feeling since she woke up multiplied three-fold, and she was left dizzy. 

Johnny’s screaming voice suddenly registered, “Sam! Sam!” and that horrific smile was suddenly a lot closer. Close enough that she knew for sure that there were too many teeth and they were all flat, which was a wonder. This thing screamed predator and yet its teeth were bricks of (hopefully) enamel, similar to an herbivore. But she wasn’t mistaken, this thing was not an herbivore. Johnny was trying to pull her away, thuds of footfalls slowly getting louder and louder, more deafening with every step. With a sudden gasp, Sam snagged Johnny’s arm and they were off, panic and a deep sense of survival guiding their feet and giving them speed. 

The thing took off after them.

“It’s gaining on us!” Sam screamed, eyes rolling in panic.

“I know!” Johnny yelled back. “I’m going to do something stupid!” He veered off.

“Johnny! No!” She stopped so suddenly that she skid forward and almost fell. “Don’t play heroics, come back! Don’t leave me alone!”

“Run, Sass! Get the fuck out of here!” Johnny turned to face her, eyes wild. “I would rather die than see you hurt, now go!” She didn’t move, shaking her head in silent denial, tears building in her eyes. “Go, damnit! _GO!”_

Releasing a heartbroken sob, Sam turned and ran again, survival winning over the desire to help and stay. She glanced behind her, praying she didn’t trip but unwilling to look the other way from what she was sure was Johnny’s death. He released a battle cry and ran right for the monster.

In what felt like forever, the monster just reached down and plucked him mid sprint like a flower in bloom, Johnny’s battle cry turning into a scream of terror. It’s mouth opened and Sam moaned out in despair. “God no, please no – please – save him, oh God -”

Johnny hadn’t stopped screaming. 

It was a piercing sound, one that she could have lived without ever knowing. 

Johnny was bitten in half. 

Those teeth, big blocks of enamel, crushed his body in half. It was horrific. His body was pulverized, nothing sharp to ease the pain. His organs had burst open inside of him because of the force. He had to have died in pure agony. 

His corpse made eye contact with her, and all she could see on his face was the pure, unadulterated terror. Those teeth closed and Johnny was swallowed. The monster’s head tilted back down, and its hair parted to reveal vacant, dead eyes. No mercy. No acknowledgement that it had taken a bright life, one that was supposed to move on and do great things. 

_What was she going to tell his family?_

The monster started forward again.

Panic struck her like lightning and she ducked between branches and ran, breath gasping out in harsh sobs that tore her throat open. The earth seemed to reach for her feet with spindly fingers made of weeds and twigs, and branches stung her cheeks and bare legs. Her glasses fogged from her wet breaths and she took them off, the world a kaleidoscope of muted greens and browns of endless trees in the dark. She could barely see.

The footsteps sounded like they were running again.

Sam uttered a small scream as the ground gave way beneath her, and she tumbled downhill hard and rolling, colliding with the ground roughly, rocks and debris embedding themselves into fresh scrapes and creating new bruises. There was mud at the bottom, thankfully, and it softened her fall. 

Groaning, face first, she lifted her head and reckoned she had whiplash from the twinge in her neck. She wiped her face and rolled over, gasping for breath and staring at the canopy of trees, moonlight seeping through like the spotlights of heaven. Reliving the past hour, she realized that the monster didn’t seem to see very well, if the way it turned to them without looking was any indication. It was more than likely that its sense of smell and hearing were much better than its sight. If that was the case, this mud spot was the perfect hiding place. Which was good, because she didn’t think she could move. Her body ached, she was exhausted, and she had just lost a dear friend. Moving was not a priority at that moment. 

Glancing around, she spotted her backpack a yard or two on the slope of the hill she had rolled down, its bright orange color an easy giveaway in the dark. Not worried about her notes anymore, she lifted a handful of mud and started smearing it across every inch of clean skin she could see (which wasn’t much, thankfully; her arms really hurt). Not only would she blend in more and make it harder for any predators to see her, but if this thing had any sense of smell – it was still a possibility that it could only hear very well – the mud would mask her scent more than anything else would. 

She had learned the trick when she was younger and her father had taken her on her first hunting trip. Deer had an acute sense of smell, and they even had receptors in their nostrils to determine up to six different smells at once, as opposed to humans who only had two or three. Her father taught her that mud was one of the best ways to hide. It was natural, strong, and thick. So thick that a pig coated its head in mud, let it dry, and opened an electric fence. 

She felt the footsteps.

Holding her breath, she laid back down and closed her eyes, heart pounding in her throat. After what felt like ages, the footsteps faded away. After she couldn’t hear them any longer, her breath escaped her lungs in a great burst like a coastal storm. She relaxed a bit, heart slowing down, adrenaline fading, stomach unclenching, fingers uncurling. Sam figured that she could rest there for an hour or two and gather some more strength to stand and find other people or a safe space. In the meantime, a nap would do.

…

When Sam woke up the next time it was slower, the feeling of wrongness so potent that it took her some time to register where she was and why her body hurt so much. It was bright, so bright, and when she opened her eyes it took a few minutes and lots of blinks to be able to look up at the canopy of trees above her head. Uncomfortably wet and slimy, she lifted a hand to see mud, and then it hit her.

The monster. 

_Johnny._

The tears came unbidden and unstoppable, great, heaving sobs racking her chest and scratching her sore throat. Oh Johnny. The little tall boy that had a crush on her and followed her around like a puppy, so bright, cheerful, and full of endless wit. Brown eyes like oak trees in the sun, golden flecks of pure sunlight; straight, beautiful teeth. Perfectly smart and capable. 

Dead.

Sam didn’t stop crying for a long, long time. 

After she was done, she smeared some more mud on her face and neck and stood, muscles aching, bones creaking, and wounds screaming. She wondered where Mel and Zack were, if they were still at their original camp, if they were okay. She wondered if Johnny would have survived if she wasn't such a coward. She wondered what the afterlife would have been like if she went right along with him. She wondered where she was and how she got there. She wondered if she was ever going to find help. She wondered if she was ever going to get home, and if she did, if it was too much for her to handle.

Sam kept wondering as she grabbed her pack from the forest ground and filled some Tupperware with mud, trudging in the first direction she looked in.

Hours passed, the sun blaring down through the trees and drying the mud on her skin until it formed cracks in all the creases of her clothes and joints. She opened her container and smeared more where there was too much skin showing for comfort. She got lost in her mind while she walked, stumbling through overgrowth like a zombie freshly risen from the grave. Hunger was beyond her and though her muscles ached and ached, she refused to stop. She would walk until she died, because then she could say she tried, that she hadn't given up, that Johnny's life hadn't been in vain.

When the trees thinned she heard it: heavy thuds that shook the ground under her. Sam sobbed again, a fresh wave of despair crashing through her battered body and soul. She tightened her backpack straps and started running again, as fast as she could. 

When she broke through the tree-line she saw salvation. 

The walls were gigantic, a monument of protection against these monsters that lurked around her in the forest. She started screaming pleads for entry, for help, for food, for a shower, for aspirin. She was screaming and screaming nonsense and sense and all of her pain and guilt. She didn't stop screaming even when she felt those footsteps thud after her. 

She did stop when the gate started opening and horses carrying people in green cloaks shot out as soon as it was open enough. They surrounded her and she watched as one man-laden horse raced towards the new monster that was hot on her tail. She reached out towards him, "Wait!" but grappling hooks shot out towards the monster and she quieted, eyes riveted. The man on the horse flew toward the beast, spinning so fast she almost missed the shine of freshly drawn steel. The man shot around the back of the monster, slicing the nape of its neck, and it grunted and collapsed face first. The man followed it down, landing gracefully on its back. It started steaming.

Sam watched as the man's horse trotted up to him and he pulled himself into the saddle. Black hair glinted in the evening sun, and piercing eyes struck Sam straight to her battered soul. 

She took in a breath.

"Hey, it's alright." She glanced around her to the people surrounding her with smiles on horseback. A woman with crazy auburn hair and glasses urged her horse closer. "You're going to be alright."

Sam nodded. Yeah. 

She was going to be okay.


End file.
